Clarion: Journal of Spirituality and Justice

Understanding Theological (or Political) Anger - Brad Jersak and Floris Kersloot

The following are my takeaways from advice I received from my psychologist friend, Floris Kersloot. 

The topic was on how to understand and respond as peace-builders when faced with angry reactions over theological (or political) convictions.  

 

Even when (and especially when) sharing something so basic and central to Christianity as "God is love" or "Jesus calls us away from violence into cruciform enemy love," we often see people of faith and good will triggered into what seems like inexplicable anger and defensiveness. For theological perspectives to cause angry reactions rather than lively discussions should seem strange. What 'code' might we find that unlocks the closed door of reactivity and opens the door to authentic dialogue? 

 

Normally, emotional reactions ask for an alternative emotional response. For example, fear asks for assurance, grief asks for comfort. What does anger ask for? Understanding. This can be very difficult to offer when someone is freaking out at you. But it is growing edge of those who would be peacemakers. Not to answer reactions with reactions, but with 'the other cheek' of understanding. How so?

 

We ask (ourselves or the other), "Where is the anger is coming from?" It's not simple disagreement. Something is happening at the heart level ... there's a backstory of some sort. Usually the anger arises from some deeper need or longing or fear. 

 

From there, we might explore the possibility that we share a common longing or concern, even with someone on the opposite end of the theological (or political) spectrum. [We ought also critique and transcend the spectrum itself]. For example, the shared longing between me and my wackiest (;-) friends might be our hatred of injustice and our desire to see the world set right. On that level, we might communicate this common ground by sharing stories that energize these longings and emotions. The exchange of understanding at that point defuses the anger. Our heart has been heard.   

 

Perhaps then the real debate can begin. For example, we may still disagree on HOW injustice can be (has been) addressed and what it takes to heal the world. We may still disagree on how it will happen, but by understanding that we agree that it should, the discussion may move from heat to light if we are willing (some are not if the real issue is ego-centric -- 'I need to be right'). 

 

Some of my friends (still friends and not angry) continue to differ because we operate on different assumptions. These too can be shared. For example, our perspectives are so often informed  by assumptions about how we read the Bible. In such cases, we ought to say, "we have such different ways of approaching and interpreting this text," rather than "you are unfaithful" or "unbiblical." When I accuse someone of 'literalism' and am accused of 'liberalism,' neither of us feel understood and anger lurks. But if we understand that neither of us intends to throw the text under the bus, maybe we'll stay cool enough to actually look at it together. Then maybe we'll avoid the presumption of those who wanted to prematurely separate the wheat and tares (Matthew 23:24-30), heeding instead the advice of the Master that says we're not wise enough for such us/them discernment. Better that we grow together until the harvest.  

 

We can also share how we'd like to be understood. For example, I would like to be understood this way: my perspective begins at the cross as a revelation of the nature of God as self-giving, radically forgiving, co-suffering love and the power of the resurrection to overcome evil with good. And these are to be transposed into the life of daily discipleship through the transforming grace of the Holy Spirit. 

 

By taking the permission to share this, I must also be willing to give that same permission. "How do you like to be understood." You can see then that this is not merely about sharing information, but actually co-ministering understanding to our longings and desires, fears and wounds (before anger pre-sabotages communication). Here's a basic test: am I moving toward love or moving away from it? Am I deconstructing an idea, or am I tearing down a person? Am I building my ego by winning an argument, or building a relationship by listening as carefully as I'm telling?

 

Blessed are the peace-builders; they will be called sons and daughters of God.

Pope Francis Denounces Growing ‘Demonization’ of Enemies and Outsiders - David Gibson

“God has only sons and daughters,” the pope said. “We are the ones who raise walls, build barriers, and label people. God has sons and daughters precisely so that no one will be turned away.”

Francis said “our instinctive reaction” is to “discredit or curse” those who we view as opponents, “to ‘demonize’ them so as to have a ‘sacred’ justification” for dismissing them.

God’s unconditional love, he said, “is the true prerequisite for the conversion of our pitiful hearts that tend to judge, divide, oppose and condemn.”

CLICK HERE to continue

Selah Reflections: Just Breathe: John Kiemele

I have always had a precarious relationship with breathing.  My very first breaths were problematic, or so I have been told.  My childhood and school years were punctuated by asthmatic episodes; I toted quick response meds as regularly as pencils and erasers.  Thankfully the constant challenges to breathe subsided in adulthood, however I quickly remember those sensations when, like today, I wrestle with some virus that turns each inhale into a litany of spastic hacks and coughs.

Oh the reassurance of a deep, unhindered breath!  

It enthuses the day with hopeful expanse.  

It reinforces the essential rhythm of life.  

It roots me deeply in the present moment.  

It raises my chin and nudges a connecting smile.

In our dispersed community of contemplative companions, named Selah, we desire to pause and nurture contemplative living with Jesus.  One of the regular, simple practices that supports this desire is simply pausing and focusing my attention on my breathing…whatever state it happens to be in at the time.  Disconnecting from everything else that spins and swirls around the moment…drawing my attention to what is going on in my body right here and right now…I settle in and direct my focus to breathing.

Breathe in.  

Breathe out.  

It reminds me that I am right here in this moment.

It reminds me what is essential in this moment.

Receiving the inflow of life.

Releasing what no longer supports life.

Inevitably I end up reconnecting much deeper with the Giver of All Breath and with this present moment where life is and is in its fullness.  

Breathe in.

Breathe out.

It’s that spontaneous.

It’s that accessible.

It’s that life-giving.

So be it.

Peace and love – and ample deep breaths – to you today.

Vengeance is Love - Klaas Goverts (trans. Floris and Judith Kersloot)

"Vengeance is Love" (Mar 26, 2012)

by Klaas Goverts, translated by Floris and Judith Kersloot 

Vengeance is Love

"O Lord, God of vengeance,

God of vengeance, shine forth.

Rise up, O Judge of the earth."

(Psalm 94:1-2)

God is the Judge of the earth; Abraham even said, "the whole earth." Here we must not think of a stern person wielding a gavel, but a merciful God who will put everything right, who will bring about justice.¹ God is the one who straightens the crooked paths (Isaiah 45:2) of the whole earth. His appearance in vengeance, therefore, doesn't bring forth darkness but creates a radiant light.

Vengeance is recovery

The Hebrew word for vengeance is naqam. And naqam has the meaning: restoring justice.² Vengeance is the restoration and recovery of justice. Traditionally the word naqam also has to do with qum, which means 'rising up.' Thus, vengeance has got everything to do with raising up what has fallen. Vengeance biblically, therefore, has everything do with the restoration of all things.³ "God of vengeance, shine forth," says Psalm 94. Popular opinion says if God appears with his vengeance, it will become dark. But Psalm 94 says, the light will shine. There will again be radiance in our lives. 

The connotation of the word vengeance

Vengeance generally sounds slightly negative and malevolent in our ears. If you have feelings of vengeance, you don't generally have much good in mind, do you? Rather, vengeance actually is the restoration of the relationships in the community. So vengeance has to do with restoring, the recovery of relationships. Vengeance has everything to do with the question: How do we get Cain and Abel back together? How do we re-unite Jacob and Esau? How will coherence be restored? How do two opposites become one again? How do you get back the original unity? So again, the biblical vengeance is the rehabilitation of the relationships within the community. Vengeance is in fact a form of love, a kind of straightening. The relationships that are skewed will be straightened, so that people can look one another straight in the eyes again.

Joseph's vengeance was about giving his brothers bread. This is the mercy-bread, which is at the heart of the gospel. Elie Wiesel says in this regard: "the victim gets the last word"--giving bread to the enemy. You can also see this portrayed in the story of Elisha and the king of Syria. Rather than crushing the enemy, bread is being distributed. (2 Kings 6:21)

Divine vengeance is the counterpart of the vendetta, which says an eye for an eye (cf. Matt. 5:38-39). However, evil is to be overcome with good (Romans 12:21).

Endnotes

1. The Dutch word for 'bringing into justice' is 'terecht brengen.' It carries a double meaning: bringing into justice and finding what was lost.
2. Elsewhere the author says, "God's wrath is not blind anger, but a 'seeing anger' that looks beyond. So if God rebukes his enemy, it has to do with the breath of his Spirit." Goverts renders Isaiah 11:4 - "By the breath of his mouth [referring to the Messiah], he will slay the destroyer [Dutch - afbreker]." He writes, "So his wrath is a creative anger that brings about something which otherwise would not have been. Sometimes we need to deconstruct (make a clearing) in order to create another path, a passible way." 
3. In Acts 3:32, the Dutch word for restoration is 'wederoprichting' and carries both the sense of restoration and raising up.

Biography

Dr. K. D. Goverts studied theology from 1964 to 1972 at the University of Utrecht. He graduated in 1992 from the University of Amsterdam with the thesis: Het Lied van de Doortocht (The Song of Passage -- on Exodus 15).

 

Dr. K.D. Goverts gave Bible courses in the Netherlands, Belgium and Martinique. He was inspired by the German Bible translations of the Jewish philosophers Martin Buber and Franz Rosenzweig and the French Bible translation of Andre Chouraqui. The thought of Jewish thinkers Edmond Fleg, Andre Neher, Bernard Chouraqui and others are sources of inspiration for his studies.

 

Some of his Bible studies are chronicled and translated into French for the benefit of churches in the Congo. Dr. K. D. Goverts is also a pastor in North Holland province at Ursem, Avenhorn and Berkhout.

George Takei: "They interned my family. Don’t let them do it to Muslims."

George Takei is an actor, activist and social media maven.

The United States apologized for locking up Japanese Americans. Have we learned nothing?

An excerpt:

There is dangerous talk these days by those who have the ear of some at the highest levels of government. Earlier this week, Carl Higbie, an outspoken Trump surrogate and co-chair of Great America PAC, gave an interview with Megyn Kelly of Fox News. They were discussing the notion of a national Muslim registry, a controversial part of the Trump administration’s national security plans, when Higbie dropped a bombshell: “We did it during World War II with Japanese, which, you know, call it what you will,” he said. Was he really citing the Japanese American internment, Kelly wanted to know, as grounds for treating Muslims the same way today? Higbie responded that he wasn’t saying we should return to putting people in camps. But then he added, “There is precedent for it.”

CLICK HERE to continue

Highway 16 & Disproportionate Violence Against Indigenous Women - Dominic Jersak

Abstract

The goal of this essay is to understand the colonial roots of the disproportionate violence rates against Indigenous women, the Highway of Tears (a Highway in Northern British Columbia along which over 40 women have gone missing), as well as address the solutions these communities have come up with themselves. It begins with broader information to explain key statistics, as well as the scope of the situation. Settlers imposing Eurocentric views on First Nation Peoples lead to problematic relations, especially when Residential Schools were born and damaged Indigenous relations with the government and RCMP for years to come. The second half of this essay summarizes and discusses the Highway of Tears Symposium, a plan created by several Aboriginal communities along the Highway of Tears, and what exactly these solutions are addressing.

            Keywords: Highway 16, Highway of Tears, Violence Against Indigenous Women, First Nations Relations

Download Highway of Tears

Salt and Light: Not a New Law - Eberhard Arnold h/t Brad Jersak

The Sermon on the Mount by Miki Goodaboom - www.mikigoodaboom.com

Editor's note: When approaching the Sermon on the Mount, two opposing ditches need to be avoided. One is adopting the Sermon as a new Law (to attain righteousness); the other is rejecting it as an impossible Law (negated by grace and the Cross). In the following excerpt, Eberhard Arnold steers between these errors, urging us along the grace-empowered Jesus Way. In that sense, the Sermon on the Mount is Christ's version of Paul's "fruit of the Spirit" (Galatians 6). It is the life of Christ-in-me, lived by those who "abide in the Vine" (John 15). 

"For through the Law I died to the Law so that I might live for Go. I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I but Christ lives in me. And the life I now live, I live by faith in the Son of God, who loved me and gave his life for me." (Galatians 2:19-20)  

That life, the salt and light life in Christ, was described for us by Christ himself in this Sermon as the foundation for Christian cruciform discipleship.

Excerpt from Eberhard Arnold's Salt and Light: Living the Sermon on the Mount (The Plough Publishing House).

Not a New Law

How do we respond to the Sermon on the Mount? The Sermon on the Mount is the first step on the way to discipleship. ... If we fully grasp the Sermon on the Mount and believe it, then nothing can frighten us -- neither our own self-recognition, nor financial threats, nor our personal weakness. 

The dedication demanded in the Sermon on the Mount is not a new law or moral teaching. Instead it is forgiveness. Its vital element is the light and warmth of the Holy Spirit. Here is Christ: the essence of salt, and the strength of the tree that bears good fruit. The Sermon on the Mount shows us the character of a community, which shines like a light for the whole world. 

The Sermon on the Mount is not a high-tension moralism, but we must grasp it as the revelation of God's real power in human life. If we take our surrender to God seriously and allow him to enter our lives as light, as the only energy which makes new life possible, then we will be able [empowered] to live the new life. 

If we see the Sermon on the Mount as five new commandments, as the Tolstoyans do, we will fall right into a trap. For in his book My Religion, Leo Tolstoy lists the commandments of Jesus from the Sermon on the Mount as five new laws: peacefulness with others, sexual purity and marital faithfulness, the refusal to swear oaths, non-resistance to evil, and love for one's enemies. But Jesus shows us that the clarity and demands of the old laws are not weakened by his coming into the world; instead they are infinitely sharpened. Moreover, these are only five examples -- there could be five hundred or five thousand -- revealing the powerful effect of God's work in Christ.

His righteousness, his justice, is better than anything scholars or theologians could offer. It is something absolutely different, and it does not depend on moral intentions and good ideas. The righteousness of the law can be fulfilled only through a new, organic way of living, through a life from God that flares up like light and sears and purifies like salt. It is like a flame that shines, like the sap that pulses through a tree. It is life!

Spoken Oct. 27, 1935, at the Rhön Bruderhof.

The God who speaks all things into being, makes himself speechless. Kenneth Tanner

When the divine community we call God created the visible (and invisible) universe they spoke words like "let there be light" and things that were not in one moment began to exist in the next. Stars. Planets. Oceans. Mountains. Trees. Animals. Flowers.

All these things and more were breathed into existence by God. When the Father began to make all things, our wisdom tells us that it was the Son by whom the Father spoke all things into being; Christ spoke the things that were not as though they were and they were so. Orchid. Zebra. Maple. Everest. Atlantic. Jupiter. Andromeda. And so on.

Instead of speaking humanity into existence, our wisdom tells us that God hand-crafted men and women from the clay, breathed into our motionless humanity the breath of life, and gave us something the rest of creation does not have except metaphorically: the divine capacity of language.

Though all living things communicate, only humans have the gift of speech and this capacity is creative (like God) or destructive (like the dark powers), depending on our choice.

The mystery of the Incarnation is so great that every year—in this time of Advent and Christmas, six blessed weeks of waiting and celebration—I eventually see something I have never seen before, encounter a facet of the birth narrative I missed or neglected or did not see in all its beauty.

The season from Thanksgiving to Epiphany allows Christians to marinate in the story of the Word made bone of our bone and flesh of our flesh and we come away not as spectators but as *participants* in the mystery.

White, Conservative, Christian Friend: I wish you really were pro-life - John Pavlovitz h/t/ Wayne Northey

Wayne Northey: The highlighted article below is truly powerful and wise!

Likewise in relation to the article: I am not a “progressive”, because most “progressives” I read are not consistently pro-Life. They (not all) favour the use of abortion as birth control, elevating women’s right to choose to a fetish, thereby exhibiting a cavalier attitude towards Life, while in fact reflecting a culture of Death. They are the mirror opposite to the self-described “pro-Life” advocates, who (not all) support massive slaughter of the “born“, so long as they are America’s (or whatever nation’s they inhabit) enemies. Both camps are committed to ruthlessly destroy Life that “gets in the way." Both are profoundly narcissistic and hedonistic.

An excerpt:

I can tell by how often your heavy burden for the sanctity of life evaporates upon delivery.In so many cases this compassion really has a nine-month expiration date, as if life begins at conception but ends upon leaving the birth canal.The completion of that third trimester is actually the shelf life of your passionate regard for much of the living.

Because if that life you say you so treasure, one day converts to Islam, you label it dangerous, you see it as a threat, you applaud suggestions of its expulsion, you deny it open worship.

If that life eventually comes out as LGBTQ, you condemn its soul, harass it in your workplace and church, try to prevent its marriage, tell it where and when it can use a public bathroom.You bully it and drive it to suicide.

CLICK HERE to continue

Trump's Apocalypse and Hillary's Hallelujah - Zach Hoag

What a difference a week makes.

It already seems like forever ago that we lived in a world where Trump just couldn’t be elected president. Most of us (literally - a popular majority) just knew in our bones that when we cast our vote, this annoying potential catastrophe would be averted and all would be well. If Trump’s apocalypse were to ever come, it most certainly wouldn’t be now.

But it did come, and it came by way of the Electoral College doing what the Electoral College sometimes does - favoring the candidate chosen by the most delegates rather than the most individual citizens. While in my opinion this is all the more reason to abolish the Electoral College (and the delegate systems in the RNC and DNC primaries for that matter), that is neither here nor there. Trump won. And his apocalypse is upon us. 

Apocalypse Now

I recently wrapped up writing my latest book, The Light is Winning, which will be released by Zondervan next summer. In it, I talk about one way of looking at the current phenomena of Christianity’s decline in the U.S. and the shift to a post-Christian cultural reality. 

I propose that we view it as an apocalypse.

“Apocalypse” literally means revealing, unveiling, or disclosure.* The book of Revelation in the Bible - typically seen as source material for all things End Times - is even called “The Apocalypse of John” in some traditions, showing its synonymous meaning to revelation or revealing. And the book title is derived from the apostle John’s own words at the start of the letter: “The revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show his servants what must soon take place...”

CLICK HERE to continue

 

Review of Richard Rohr's "The Divine Dance" - by Alex Rayment

This review is approached with fear and trembling.  Fr. Richard Rohr is a writer who almost needs no introduction and his latest work, The Divine Dance, he describes as the ‘most important book [he has] written’.  Even with a very limited knowledge of Rohr’s previous work, The Divine Dance is like reading a pilgrim’s journal at the peak of a very long and arduous journey.  With extensive engagement of Christianity’s finest scholars, Rohr is taking the book entitled the Trinity of the bookshelf of the Church, dusting it off and reminding us of its essentiality.

 

The Divine Dance’s major project is to present both the sheer beauty and urgent centrality of the doctrine of the Trinity.  Tracing the doctrine from Genesis to Revelation, from Early Church to contemporary writings, Rohr argues that whilst we talk about a Triune God, what Christians actually do is worship a patriarchal God that had an interesting Son and occasionally does things by his Spirit.  Rohr implores us to re-cast all that we think about who God is and uses countless images of relationship as a way of refreshing this ancient doctrine.  If one, as Rohr describes, ‘lives in the flow’, then this relationship language is the perfect language for describing a living relationship with God.  As the title suggests, the perichoresis (circular motion) of the Trinity is not a movement happening in the abstract cosmos but is a very real invitation from God to His creation, asking us to join that dance.  This ‘flow’ allows humanity to be truly human and enables us to be attentive and aware of the Spirit’s guiding.  Here is a prayer that Rohr draws on that sums up what he describes as The Divine Dance:

 

God for us, we call you Father.

God alongside us, we call you Jesus.

God within us, we call you Holy Spirit.

You are the eternal mystery that enables, enfolds, and enlivens all things,

Even us and even me.

 

The use of terms such as ‘mystery’ may be uncomfortable for some, so it is important to know where Rohr is writing from.  Being a Franciscan Priest of the Perennial Tradition, Rohr also states Karl Rahner as being his favourite European modern theologian.  Rahner (1904 - 1984) was an incredibly profound Catholic Theologian who lived through both world wars and was an advisor to the Second Vatican Council.  Also writing to a backdrop of the dawn of post-modernism, Rahner specialised in the realm of Christian mystery and Richard Rohr in this latest book, certainly takes up that mantle.  However, not all questions are answered.  Where Rohr focusses on the eternal nature of Jesus, he loses the profundity of the Trinity in the historic life of the Rabbi-Carpenter of Nazareth.  As Rohr attempts to focus our gaze on the Trinity he runs the risk of making it an abstract idea where the notions of ‘love’ or ‘relationship’ become God.  ‘God is love’ is not the same as saying ‘love is God’ and here we meet the supreme challenge of a work like Rohr’s.  God, in his freedom, defines the bounds of what may we say about Him in the life of Jesus.  Could He be other than that?  Of course He could. And Rohr is probably closer than most in explaining the Trinity, however if Jesus is not the starting point of how we talk about God we are on a razor’s edge between idolising subjective human attributes (like love) or fallen notions of who God should be (like a fighter for my cause).  

 

However, the absolute accessibility of this work despite the engagement of oft dismissed ‘heavier’ works of Christian literature, is a noble feat in itself.  The need for this kind of work is essential.  If only every Christian writer drew from wells as deep as Rohr’s, or even exposed themselves to a similar breadth of authorship, the Church would be much better at talking across denominational lines. Rohr’s ability to present such a doctrine with the tone of a friend on a long walk is a very special gift.  As a pastor, Fr. Richard has the Church’s spiritual life as his heart and this is witnessed throughout especially with the final section of the book which includes way of applying all that has been read into the daily life of a reader; again a strange and wonderful talent for a writer concerned with such a doctrine.  This book is not only a thought-provoking read but it is an invitation to go on a journey in the Divine Dance and never, ever leave.

Hugh Hewitt Questions Ben Carson - preface by Wayne Northey

Hugh Hewitt Questions Ben Carson If He Was Ruthless Enough to Kill Thousands of Innocent Kids in War

The audience booed when conservative radio host Hugh Hewitt asked evangelical neurosurgeon Dr. Ben Carson (likely now to be a cabinet member in the Trump administration), December 15, 2015, if he was ruthless enough to kill thousands of innocent kids in war.  Think of it!: Hewitt was rubbing Carson’s nose in it as it were, given his Hippocratic Oath, which originally reads in part: “I will use treatment to help the sick according to my ability and judgment, but never with a view to injury and wrong-doing… Into whatsoever houses I enter, I will enter to help the sick, and I will abstain from all intentional wrong-doing and harm, especially from abusing the bodies of man or woman, bond or free“. And possibly given that he is a Christian. Carson’s affirmation below (full transcript) seems a tad non-pro-life.

Not to worry though! One thousand Evangelical leaders endorsed Donald Trump June 22, 2016, “a true believer” by his and their assertions, all avidly “pro-life” – except of course, one must understand a minor point, those who need slaughtering to protect America’s interests around the world. (Incidentally, no one of all the GOP contenders that night, Trump included, disagreed with Carson’s response to this question from Hewett): “So you are OK with the deaths of thousands of innocent children and civilians?” Carson responded: “You got it.” And again to underscore, “You got it.” Then later: “… the job of the president of the United States is to protect the people of this country and to do what is necessary in order to get it done.” This, by logical deduction, means massive murdering all over the globe. To be President of the United States is undeniably to become “murderer-in-chief” for the entire world.

Now I’m an evangelical. And Evangelicals are People of the Book. So wait a minute! Didn’t Jesus say something about one’s neighbour, one’s enemies? Something about “loving” them? “Ah”, say a huge majority of American Evangelicals (Canadian and all nationalities included for that matter), “there is an exception clause” to what Jesus taught and exemplified, what John says about God in chapter 3 verse 16, what Jesus seems in the Gospels to say about a kind of litmus test that goes something like: love of neighbour is only as real as its extreme case, love of enemies (Matthew 5:43 – 48 & Luke 6: 27 – 36); and love of enemies in light of the atonement, supremely shows us how to “live a life of love” as in Romans 5:6 – 11, Ephesians 5:1 & 2 – the “better way” of I Corinthians 13; and love of enemies therefore by Gospel logic is the supreme test for love of God.  (Now that’s what my Book says! )

CLICK HERE to continue

Hope for Judas and Mark 14:21 - A Discussion

Fr. Aidan Kimel recently posted a fascinating, must-read article on the question of Judas Iscariot's final destiny in light of universal hope. It begins, "But what about the Iscariot‽ The fate of Judas is the challenge most often posed to anyone who dares to proclaim the greater hope." That's the question. His research and thoughts on the matter are worth reading here:

Pascha and the Apokatastasis of Judas Iscariot

However, it still left me wondering about Jesus' words at the Last Supper in Mark 14, where we read,

17 When evening came, Jesus arrived with the Twelve. 18 While they were reclining at the table eating, he said, “Truly I tell you, one of you will betray me—one who is eating with me.”

19 They were saddened, and one by one they said to him, “Surely you don’t mean me?”

20 “It is one of the Twelve,” he replied, “one who dips bread into the bowl with me. 21 The Son of Man will go just as it is written about him. But woe to that man who betrays the Son of Man! It would be better for him if he had not been born.”

Verse 2 ought to trouble even the most hopeful among us, for in light of the possibility of ultimate redemption, how could the Saviour say non-existence would have been better than a redeemed outcome, the betrayal notwithstanding. That question led to a fascinating discussion among friends, worth sharing here:

Responding to Mark 14:21 

Tony Fagan In my opinion, the pure love of God, unconditional love, overrides what failures any human have experienced. Hitler or any world leader will all be resurrected. Something in man takes delight at the thought of someone didn't make it but I did. It is as if man makes himself feel a notch above another to believe so and so won't be in the Kingdom. Religions love exclusivity and drawing the line in the sand.

 

Brad Jersak Agreed, so again, what do we make of the Lord's words in this text?

 

Jim Folsom It is interesting that you bring this up. I'm not a language scholar. I have heard people read this passage as 'good for Jesus if Judas had never been born.' Is that a misinterpretation or is it a possible reading of that text?

 

Brad Jersak I'm not sure that it helps, but it is very different, isn't it? It creates new and maybe worse problems. The best option might be to read it rhetorically rather than literally.

 

Tony Fagan "I forgive you and I love my enemies. I came to die," Jesus would say, for all humanity, to include everyone into the joy of being as one with my Father.

 

This might be too general but the Holy Spirit will show us more on this when we are ready to handle it. God created every human being before the earth began orbitting around the sun. I think, in my opinion, if God didn't want someone in His Kingdom He would have simply not design them in the first place. I don't see God being the creator of people in order to have a day of let's exterminate those detestables, at long last.

 

Tim Hall Do you think Christ might have had Ecclesiastes in mind?

Eccl. 6:3 A man may have a hundred children and live many years; yet no matter how long he lives, if he cannot enjoy his prosperity and does not receive proper burial, I say that *a stillborn child is better off than he.* [emphasis mine].

Sean Davidson We can hope: 

"Then he will come, Christ the uncrucified,
Christ the discrucified, his death undone,
His agony unmade, his cross dismantled—
Glad to be so—and the tormented wood
Will cure its hurt and grow into a tree
In a green springing corner of young Eden,
And Judas damned take his long journey backward
From darkness into light and be a child
Beside his mother’s knee, and the betrayal
Be quite undone and never more be done."

- Edwin Muir, "The Transfiguration" 

Israel breaching Palestine’s right to development - UN Report

NEW YORK / GENEVA (28 October 2016) – Palestine’s right to development is being denied by Israel, creating an environment plagued by poverty, “epic” unemployment and economic stagnation, according to a new report from a United Nations human rights expert. 

Michael Lynk - the UN Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied since 1967 - expresses deep concerns about the situation in the Occupied Palestinian Territory (OPT), in the context of the right to development. 

He calls on Israel to bring a complete end to almost 50 years of occupation, describing an atmosphere of “despair and hopelessness” among Palestinian citizens. 

“The Palestinian economy is without parallel in the modern world,” said Mr. Lynk, delivering his first report* to the UN General Assembly in New York. “Israel’s occupation is denying Palestine’s right to development and severely hampering its ability to attain even the minimum targets of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs). 

“Poverty is rising. Unemployment is rising to epic levels. Food insecurity is becoming more acute. The Palestinian economy is becoming more stifled and less viable under the occupation,” the expert said. “Israel’s deliberate fragmentation of the OPT and lack of development has negatively impacted human rights.” 

Gaza has among the highest unemployment rates in the world – an overall figure of 42%, rising to 58% among the youth population, Mr. Lynk noted.  In the OPT as a whole, unemployment hit 27% in 2016 – up from 12% in 1999. 

“This occupation – which will be 50 years old in 2017 – is seriously deficient in its respect for the legal principles and obligations embedded within the right to development,” said Mr. Lynk.

CLICK HERE to continue reading

 

God is about Mercy, Not Sacrifice, and No Sparrow is Forgotten! - Roger H Mitchell

Here are the key statements of Jesus on which I wish to comment: “But go and learn what this means: ‘I desire mercy, not sacrifice.’ For I have not come to call the righteous, but sinners” (Mat 9:13) and “Are not five sparrows sold for two cents? Yet not one of them is forgotten before God” (Luke 12:6).

In order to get to the heart of Jesus’ take on the whole idea of payment and appeasement as a means of relating to God, I think it will help to look at these two sayings of Jesus together. There is something so crucial to his deliberate subversion of the whole empire domination system here, that motivates him to tell the Pharisees in no uncertain terms to “go away and learn what this means.” I suggest that this is central to the mindset change that Jesus wished to accomplish in the incarnation. After all, the sacrifice system and its outworking takes up a significant part of the law and the prophets which he claimed to fulfil.

In a previous post on katargēsis and the temple (April 29th 2011) we have already considered the way that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection brought the whole temple liturgy to an end. He did this by carrying through all that was good from it into his own life and subsequently that of his body of followers. So by insisting that the Pharisees, who were seeking to maintain the law and liturgy, learnt the deeper implications of his desire for mercy not sacrifice, it follows that he was implying that at a deep structural level the temple system itself was about mercy, and not about sacrifice. So what was sacrificed was not about payment and appeasement at all, but about mercy, or as alternatively rendered, compassion. It is very important to get hold of this.

CLICK HERE to continue

Reconciliation of Enmities is the Heart of the Gospel - Wayne Northey

Reconciliation of enmities is the heart of the Gospel message and Christian mission, and of Restorative Justice. It is a peacemaking, not warmaking, response to crime.

Restorative Justice has profound biblical roots. In Western culture, “It is an irony of history”, claims Religious Studies professor James Williams, “that the very source that first disclosed the viewpoint and plight of the victim is pilloried in the name of various forms of criticism… However, it is in the Western world that the affirmation of ‘otherness,’ especially as known through the victim, has emerged. And its roots sink deeply into the Bible as transmitted in the Jewish and Christian traditions… the standpoint of the victim is [the West’s] unique and chief biblical inheritance. It can be appropriated creatively and ethically only if the inner dynamic of the biblical texts and traditions is understood and appreciated. The Bible is the first and main source for women’s rights, racial justice, and any kind of moral transformation. The Bible is also the only creative basis for interrogating the tradition and the biblical texts (James Williams, “King as Servant Sacrifice as Service: Gospel Transformations”, Violence Renounced: René Girard, Biblical Studies, and Peacemaking, Telford, Pa.; Pandora Press; Scottdale, Pa.: Herald Press, 2000, pp. 195 & 196).

CLICK HERE to see Restorative Justice Links

"The Other is Essential to the Mystical and Loving Mind" - Meditation by Carla Cooper

An excerpt from Laurence Freeman OSB, CHRISTIAN MEDITATION NEWSLETTER, Vol. 34, No. 3, October 2010, pp. 4-5.

The other is essential to the mystical and loving mind. Otherness stimulates the mind to let go of its fixed points and expand beyond itself, enlarging the view we have of the world and of ourselves within it. . . . This is a little of what I understand by the term “a catholic mind,” because it faces openly what it cannot describe or control. The catholic mind intuitively seeks to include rather than reject, even when it might meet an abyss of difference in the other [. . . .]

We become catholic in this full and embracing sense only by means of growth, by passing through the stages of healing and integration. So none of us is catholic yet, not even the pope. There is always a ways to go. But the alternative to this process . . . is the sectarian mind that objectifies the other and, through fear and the pleasure of power, denies it its pure subjectivity, its is-ness. Socially and historically, we have done this to immigrants, to Jews, to gays and other easily targeted minorities, and also, of course, even to half the human race through the violent patriarchal exclusion of women.

By doing such things, we exclude ourselves from the whole and therefore from the Holy. God is always subject, the “great I AM,” impervious to our attempts to objectify and manipulate. We meet this pure emanation of being in our own deep silence, not in ideology or abstraction. And we meet it in diverse ways, in each other and in the beauty and wonder of creation, the ocean of being, of suffering and bliss, that we and even the creator have swum in.   Because this growth requires depth and depth needs silence, the catholic mind . . . requires contemplation. To think of contemplation as a kind of luxury, relaxation or spare time occupation entirely misses the meaning of the opening of the catholic mind as the only essential way we have to glorify God.

After meditation: Simone Weil, Letter 6, May 26, 1942, “Last Thoughts” in WAITING FOR GOD, tr. Emma Craufurd (New York: Harper Perennial Classics, 2001), pp. 49, 50, 51. 

The children of God should not have any other country here below but the universe itself, with the totality of all the reasoning creatures it ever has contained, contains or will contain. This is the native city to which we owe our love. . . . Our love should stretch as widely across all space, and should be as equally distributed in every portion of it, as is the very light of the sun. Christ has bidden us to attain to the perfection of [God] by imitating God’s indiscriminate bestowal of light. . . . We have to be catholic, that is to say, not bound by so much as a thread to any created thing, unless it be to creation in its totality. . . . We are living in times that have no precedent, and in our present situation, universality, which could formerly be implicit, has to be fully explicit. It has to permeate our language and the whole of our way of life. . . . [I]t is almost equivalent to a new revelation of the universe and of human destiny. . . . More genius is needed than was needed by Archimedes to invent mechanics and physics. Today it is not nearly enough merely to be a saint, but we must have the saintliness demanded by the present moment, a new saintliness, itself also without precedent. . . . The world needs saints who have genius, just as a plague-stricken town needs doctors.
Carla Cooper

Review of David W. Congdon's 'The God Who Saves' - by Alex Rayment

Congdon, David W, The God Who Saves: A dogmatic sketch (Chicago, IL, United States: Cascade Books, 2016)

 

A new kind of thing?

 

The term ‘Christian universalism’ may conjure up many images in the mind of the everyday follower of Jesus.   These concerns or preconceptions of the phrase are often tied up with humankind's need to judge that which is good or other.  What Congdon presents in his new book is a clear need for a revision of terms.  Where most scholars use a biblical methodology, in The God Who Saves, we see a more systematic approach to arguing for the Christian account of universalism.  The argument simplified is thus: the event of salvation is for all but not only that, it is the centre of all.  Congdon names this soteriocentrism.  In the age-old theological battle of doctrinal supremacy, here we see that rather than Patriology, Christology, Pneumatology, or any other -ology, the theology of Salvation becomes the arc above all existence.  

 

It is relatively simple as to how these jumps are made, although potentially explosive.  1) God freely chooses to define himself as the ‘Saving One’. 2) This is made concrete in the temporal life of Jesus of Nazareth, the Christ, and then made accessible by his Spirit through the Church.  And 3) (perhaps most radically) salvation is not a once for all change of nature but by life in God, salvation is an ongoing “ontic transformation of existence”.  Whilst we must wait until the Epilogue to find out what Congdon suggests regarding other faiths, people who have come to death through horrific means or, traditional belief in conscious life after death, here begins the necessary ground work on what we can enquire upon here on earth; and it is an utterly convincing effort.

Richard Rohr on the Uniqueness and Universality of Christ (interview w B Jersak)

Richard Rohr - The uniqueness and universality of Christ from Plain Truth Ministries